Five of the best ... films
Can You Ever Forgive Me? (15)
(Marielle Heller, 2018, US) 106 mins
There has been a bit of an awards-season boost – including for Richard E Grant revisting his Withnail glory days as a sozzled Brit – for this entertainingly bleak comedy, inspired by the real-life story of author-turned-forger Lee Israel. Melissa McCarthy, dialling it down somewhat, is great as Israel, a failing writer making money selling fake celebrity letters. She fully deserves her Oscar nomination.
Burning (15)
(Lee Chang-dong, 2018, South Korea) 148 mins
An adaptation of a story by Haruki Murakami, infused with the cultural disorientations particular to South Korea. Country boy Jong-su reconnects with former classmate Hae-mi; she disappears after appearing to dump him for creepy rich guy Ben. A highly unconventional fable of alienation, with echoes of Antonioni.
How To Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World (PG)
(Dean DeBlois, 2019, US) 104 mins
DreamWorks’ entertaining Vikings-and-dragons saga ends on a suitably uplifting note, with Hiccup, Astrid and the rest of the crew resolving to return their scaly chums to the apparently impenetrable dragon paradise to ensure the latest batch of hunters can’t get their hands on them. As reliably witty and relatable as ever, with no dip whatsoever in the quality of acting and animation from the previous instalments.
Green Book (12A)
(Peter Farrelly, 2018, US) 130 mins
A highly user-friendly treatment of the pre-civil rights race divide, via the memories of Tony Vallelonga, an Italian-American bodyguard and driver who ferried black pianist Don Shirley around the US south in the early 60s. Viggo Mortensen and Mahershala Ali are on fine form, though the reality of the relationship has been challenged by Shirley’s family, and critics have disputed the “white saviour” narrative.
The Favourite (15)
(Yorgos Lanthimos, 2018, Ire/UK/US) 119 mins
With all three principals receiving Oscar nods, there is an abundance of acting riches in this scabrous farce of 18th-century power politics. Olivia Colman’s Queen Anne may be getting the lion’s share of attention, but Rachel Weisz is arguably on career-best form alongside her.
AP
Five of the best ... rock & pop
Jimothy
While his music – half spoken, half rapped meanderings about class, clothes and speaking Spanish delivered over lo-fi beats – is not to everyone’s taste, there is something captivating about Londoner Jimothy. Recent shows have involved a gaggle of onstage cameras, stage diving and unironic arm waving.
King Tut’s Wah Wah Hut, Glasgow, Wednesday 6; The Mash House, Edinburgh, Thursday 7; touring to 15 February
Anna Calvi
While her first two albums – 2011’s Mercury-nominated self-titled debut and 2013’s One Breath – failed to harness the raw power of Calvi’s versatile voice and fearsome guitar squall, last year’s Top 30 smash Hunter came a lot closer. Produced by Nick Launay (Grinderman) and featuring members of the Bad Seeds, its primal urgency should translate in full live.
Roundhouse, NW1, Thursday 7 February
Chvrches
While their attempts at a mainstream pop land grab may not have been wholly successful – last year’s Love Is Dead, which featured production from producers Greg Kurstin (Adele) and Steve Mac (Westlife), spent just five weeks on the chart – the Scottish electropop trio are still a formidable live act. Fingers crossed that, like all pop-bands-with-real-instruments, they’ll have plenty of lasers.
Alexandra Palace, N22, Thursday 7; O2 Academy Birmingham, Friday 8; touring to 22 February
Matoma
No matter what Norwegian dance producer Tom Lagergren, AKA Matoma (pictured below), does he will never top the title of his debut album, 2016’s Hakuna Matoma. Actually, it feels as if he has already given up trying; 2018’s follow-up, which featured Enrique Iglesias Becky Hill and Noah Cyrus, is called One in a Million. Disappointing.
SWG3 Studio Warehouse, Glasgow, Friday 8 February
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Marius Neset
Norwegian saxophonist-composer Marius Neset had pundits stretching for superlatives on his 2011 emergence, and his spectacular rise has justified all of them. Neset couples sax virtuosity to a genre sweep that takes in jazz and improv, funk, Grieg-reminiscent classical music and more. This gig showcases his eclectic 2017 album, Circle of Chimes.
Purcell Room, SE1, Tuesday 5 February
JF
Three of the best ... classical concerts
Katya Kabanova
With a new production to come from Scottish Opera in March, Opera North’s revival of Tim Albery’s 2007 production of Janáček’s tragedy is the first of three stagings opening over the next six weeks. It features Stephanie Corley in the title role. Two days later, Richard Jones’s new production is unveiled at Covent Garden, with Amanda Majeski taking the lead and Pavel Cernoch as Boris. Edward Gardner conducts, in his Royal Opera debut.
The Grand Theatre & Opera House, Leeds, Saturday 2 to 27 February; touring to 21 March; Royal Opera House, WC2, Monday 4 to 26 February
Thomas Larcher
Austrian composer and pianist Thomas Larcher will be in residence at the Aldeburgh festival in June, where his opera The Hunting Gun will receive its UK premiere. The BBC Symphony Orchestra is making a bit of a feature of Larcher’s music in its concerts at the Barbican, too, and Karina Canellakis’s concert begins with his symphony for baritone and orchestra, Alle Tage, settings of Ingeborg Bachmann with Thomas Oliemans as soloist.
Barbican Hall, EC2, Friday 8 February
Babel
The Scottish Ensemble’s collaboration with Venezuelan pianist Gabriela Montero is more than the usual partnership between an orchestra and soloist. Montero has devised the whole programme around the European premiere of her own Babel, for piano and strings. There are works by Shostakovich, Messiaen and Pēteris Vasks as well, while no Montero concert would be complete without an improvisation, this time alongside the ensemble.
Glasgow Royal Concert Hall, Friday 8; touring to 16 February
AC
Five of the best ... exhibitions
Tracey Emin
Colossal nude statues and raw expressive paintings feature alongside films and photographs in a soul-searching show created when the artist was mourning her mother. Emin challenges the cliches of contemporary art with her defiant insistence that painting, drawing and figurative sculpture can be just as subversive as an unmade bed.
White Cube Bermondsey, SE1, Wednesday 6 February to 7 April
Jeff Koons
The kitsch world of Koons may seem a million miles from Oxford’s academic serenity but he is more of an intellectual than you’d think. Art-historical references pervade his hyperpop universe. His Gazing Ball paintings fix reflective eyes into replicas of paintings by the likes of Giotto and Courbet. He will be oddly at home in the Ashmolean.
Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, Thursday 7 February to 9 June
George Shaw
As Britain chews its own foot off in pursuit of Brexit, this painter holds up a fascinating mirror to national identity. Shaw paints landscapes in the tradition of Gainsborough and Constable yet his scenes, meticulously created with aircraft model paints, are not set in the unblemished countryside but the suburban edges of modern towns. Is this England? And what kind of place is it: new or old, ugly or beautiful?
The Holburne Museum, Bath, Friday 8 February to 6 May
Yinka Shonibare
The cathedral’s Mappa Mundi is a masterpiece of medieval mapmaking that reveals how Europeans imagined the world 700 years ago. Shonibare has created a new work in response to the strange beings that were thought to inhabit distant lands: people with mouths in their stomachs or a single huge foot. Shonibare explores the wild and fantastic marginalia of the map to reveal the bizarrely unreal ways in which we still imagine the Other.
Hereford Cathedral, to 1 June
Tom Wesselmann
Pop artist Tom Wesselmann was the visual equivalent of novelist Philip Roth: an unapologetic painter of male heterosexual lust. His Great American Nudes turn Playboy pinups into lurid semi-abstract art. Like his British contemporary Allen Jones he’s easy to critique as a sexist 60s dinosaur. Yet his art is a celebration of the power of colour and shape to transform the real into the unreal, the carnal into the ethereal.
Almine Rech Gallery, W1, to 23 March
JJ
Five of the best ... theatre shows
All About Eve
The 1950 film is now considered a classic, and starred Bette Davis and Anne Baxter as two bitterly feuding actors. Wunder-director Ivo van Hove (responsible for the David Bowie musical Lazarus in 2016) helms his own starry stage adaptation and you can be sure he won’t hold back. Lily James performs alongside Gillian Anderson, a stage actor of real heft and nuance, with PJ Harvey providing the music.
Noël Coward Theatre, WC2, Saturday 2 February to 11 May
The American Clock
Rachel Chavkin directed the arresting musical Hadestown at the National and is a truly distinctive talent; her shows always surprise. Next up for her is Arthur Miller’s wrenching play The American Clock, set in a New York still reeling from the 1929 stock market crash. Clarke Peters (The Wire) headlines this jazz-infused family drama.
Old Vic, SE1, Monday 4 February to 30 March
Bouncers
John Godber’s Bouncers is one of Hull Truck’s most frequently performed and popular plays. Its 30th-anniversary production was the final work staged at the String Street venue in 2009, before the company’s move to Ferensway. Now, Godber’s raucous show returns to the Truck Theatre, with an updated script and contemporary music. It’s as much gig as theatre and sees four suited actors inhabit more than 20 truly rowdy roles.
Hull Truck Theatre, Tuesday 5 to 16 February
The Price
The theatrical heavyweights have come out punching in this 50th-anniversary production of Arthur Miller’s The Price. Brendan Coyle and Adrian Lukis star as two estranged brothers who finally meet up after 16 years to sell off some family furniture. Stage-acting maestro David Suchet plays furniture dealer Gregory Solomon, tasked with overlooking this seminal family showdown. The show is directed by Jonathan Church and transfers from Bath after glowing reviews.
Wyndham’s Theatre, WC2, Tuesday 5 February to 27 April
Sweeney Todd
Attend the tale of Sweeney Todd! The demon barber of Fleet Street returns in a co-production between Lyric Theatre and Northern Ireland Opera. Singer Steven Page and director Walter Sutcliffe are back at the Lyric after impressing with last year’s production of The Threepenny Opera. Stephen Sondheim’s score is as thrilling and subversive as they come.
Lyric Theatre, Belfast, Saturday 2 to 23 February
MG
Three of the best ... dance shows
V/DA & MHz: Void
For one night only, a repeat performance of Mele Broomes’s Void, an award winner at last year’s Edinburgh fringe. Broomes’s experimental dance in a glitchy video landscape is based on JG Ballard’s novel Concrete Island, but with its themes of urban dissociation and paranoia mapped on to the experience of being a black woman.
Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh, Wednesday 6 February
James Cousins Company: Epilogues
Cousins is a talented choreographer who is increasingly interested in telling stories in his work. Epilogues features three duets about relationships – between lovers, friends and family – including Within Her Eyes from 2012, where the female dancer never once touches the ground.
Jerwood DanceHouse, Ipswich, Friday 8 & 9 February
New Work New Music
Here are six premieres, all set to music never before used for dance played by the London Sinfonietta. Work comes from Aletta Collins, Goyo Montero, Juliano Nunes and Alexander Whitley, and Royal Ballet dancers Kristen McNally and Calvin Richardson.
Royal Opera House: Linbury Theatre, WC2, Wednesday 6 to 9 February
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